Shades of grey

[DazednConfused]

Hey guys

 

Straight into it - heres what i think should happen;

 

Aside from a very few home locations (ie. Matthew town etc.) pirates should lose all other ports.

 

Dependant on 2 factors pirates can enter any nationality port -  A, their notoriety and B, that particular ports transparency.

 

It could be that the further you get from a nation's capital, the less stringent their entry criteria is. So as long as you haven't harmed anything from that port you could enter as a pirate. 

 

This also finally will open up the possibility of smuggling goods between nations as potentially you could be at war with them but still enter their far away 'shady' ports and sell high value or contraband items - for a reasonable fee of course.

 

Neutrals will have no 'home' ports. why? because they are not represented in this area. As a neutral you use OTHER nation's ports and can be the trading bridge between enemies. All neutral ports will get added to the in game nations but will be the least patriotic, the easiest to capture, and the best for players who ride the line between legal and not.

 

As a possible future tool nation navies can patrol around their shadier ports possibly over time changing its status towards greater loyalty - but as soon as patrols cease the status quo will emerge.

 

Smaller nations can be added to appease various players but the same rules would apply. 

 

In fact in this ruleset why have a neutral faction at all? just pick a starting nation and you could potentially trade with any nation - as long as you knew where to go.

 

 

pick apart and revise at will.

 

Dazed

[Magnum]

I do like a world where the "Navies" could be at war with each other while the people of the outlying ports are more "practical" about it.

 

I think what you are perhaps trying for is a merchant class that while somewhat dependent on the "flag" they are under - that it is not the be all and end all of their lives?

 

----

 

I think if you divide all the pirate ports (except for a few classic biggies) and the neutral ports except for 5 or 10 "free" ports where literally everyone is welcome amongst all the other nations it could still be a very fun game with just 6 factions (and a few very harassed pirates).

[maturin]

I agree in principle. Rather than actual pirate ports I would rather see corrupt and lawless ports that are nominally national, yet open to pirates.

 

However, such a system is hard to do right if pirates are going to be instantly identifiable as such. Chasing a pirate into a port of your own nation and then being powerless to attack him there will be really dumb.

[DazednConfused]

You could just have some kind of IF, THEN kind of thing so if a 'pirate' was in range of (i stress this) an INVISIBLE ring of you, then he couldn't enter the port. He would only be able to enter if the coast is clear and the port was actually shady enough to enter.

[Magnum]

And those shady ports need a dive or three where a person can hire some gruff characters when needed.

[Powderhorn]

This seems like a really good idea.  Basically a function of notoriety of the pirate in question and the lawlessness of the port.  Maturin raises an excellent point, so perhaps that could be resolved by having lawlessness not be a fixed number, but a variable depending on proximity to capital and proximity of / frequency of national patrols.  At that point, neutrals could be gotten rid of entirely, and if you wanted to play an "Unaffiliated" character, just don't attack other vessels which would increase your notoriety.

 

That could further be enhanced by essentially recreating the Berlin Decree and the Orders in Council of 1807.  (If you trade with our enemies, you are subject to seizure.)  A way to do that would be to (with a diplomatic system in place) allow for trade embargos on other nations.  If a ship is seen entering or leaving a harbor, it can be attacked by the nation so embargoing.

 

This would really blur the line between smuggling and piracy, which, I think would be a very good thing indeed.

[William the Drake]

Very nice stuff here Dazed. In fact, you beet me to the punch on a couple of concepts: I agree that there should be no Neutral faction, and that pirates should have no ports (but should have something to work from)

 

i'll be posting something similar momentarily with a couple of tweaks of my own (mostly from the Pirate point of view), I hope you give it a look and give some feedback from your side.

[DazednConfused]

Oh i know both sides. muhahhaaha